


What the Bomb Girl Saw

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Series: Many Little AUs for the Purpose of Exploding the Lilshotgun Tag [7]
Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Post-World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26485141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: It's after WW2 and Lilith and Mary are bomb girls. But when the men start coming home, it changes a lot of things.
Relationships: Sister Lilith/Shotgun Mary (Warrior Nun)
Series: Many Little AUs for the Purpose of Exploding the Lilshotgun Tag [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905607
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	What the Bomb Girl Saw

Lilith knows the girl from the factory by her first name only, Mary.

Mary is taciturn, gruff, and keeps to herself. Her production is always a little ahead of Lilith’s. Her welds always a little neater. Her rows of finished wing flaps always perfectly to spec. She cuts a compelling, if slightly intimidating figure, smoking outdoors in front of the factory with her hair knotted up in a red bandana.

Lilith doesn’t like to be second. She’s tried chatting her up, tried to find out what her secrets are, but Mary’s not much of a talker.

There’s been rumors going around the factory that the jobs will be going away, now that the men are coming home. Most likely the poorer producers will be culled first, so Lilith’s anxious to up her productivity. But then, Mary’s more likely to be cutbefore Lilith since the factory owner isn’t fond of “the coloreds.” Lilith feels some premature survivor’s guilt at this fact.

When the whistle blows today, she sees Mary go to her locker, and pack into a duffle bag all of the things she normally leaves in it. She doesn’t bother to change out of her coveralls. Frowning, Lilith follows her outside. Mary takes out her filtered Luckies.

“Need a light?” Lilith offers.

Mary shakes her head, takes out a zippo, and lights her cigarette.

“Why’d you take all your stuff? Did they let you go?”

Mary shrugs. “The men are back. They need the jobs.”

Lilith feels some indignation on her behalf. “But you’re better than me.”

“I know.” Mary looks at her, not unkindly but with a certain distance. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it. I’m used to it.”

She walks off into the early autumn night. Lilith watches her go, and wonders what her circumstances are, why she needs the money, where her family is, what she’s going to do now. She knows it’s none of her business, but she can’t help it. She keeps her distance, but she follows Mary down the sidewalk into the cool Cleveland evening.

Lilith wonders if she and Mary have more in common than being good at spot welding. She’s long suspected it. Something about the confidence of her walk, the way changing back into a day dress didn’t make her look any softer than she did in coveralls. It’s why she’s following her now, she supposes. She doesn’t have the excuse of competition anymore; she just wants to know if she’s right.

She follows Mary into downtown, and sees her enter a brick-faced residential building with curly wrought-iron bars on the windows. Lilith doesn’t know this neighborhood; from the sweet shops, the shoeshine shops, and the jazz pouring out of the storefronts, she concludes it’s Black but not poor. Still, she catches a few sidelong looks as she’s walking; she doesn’t belong here and anyone could tell that.

She’s committed now, though. She follows Mary into the building. It’s a walkup with four floors. She can hear Mary’s footsteps in the stairwell. She inches quietly through the door and listens, counting the flights until she hears the sound of a heavy door opening and closing, and Mary leaving the stairwell. The top floor. Lilith shrugs, and walks up the stairs.

When she reaches the top floor, she finds two women, young, fit and dressed in trousers and short sleeved shirts, smoking in the stairwell. “Hey there, honey,” the younger one with lighter hair asks, “are you lost?”

Lilith hadn’t quite planned for running into anyone. “I was looking for Mary.”

They exchange a knowing look. “Well,” the other one says in a cool, quiet tone, “she’s up on the roof.” Her eyes flick over Lilith in her blue cotton day dress. “Not really dressed for it, are you.”

Lilith doesn’t understand. She just thanks them, and then takes the short set of steps up, pushes open the heavy door, and steps out onto the rooftop.

It takes her several seconds to make sense of what she’s seeing.

The open rooftop is dramatically lit with a bunch of handheld paraffin lamps. An older woman, her dark hair in tight victory curls, wearing trousers of army green, leans back against a wooden structure that looks like it might be an old pigeon coop or something. She has a scar down her cheek, a cane, and dog tags around her neck. Must have been WAC, Lilith thinks. Lilith had wanted to be in the WAC as well, but her parents refused to allow it, and sent her to become a bomb girl instead.

“Come on, Camila,” the older woman is shouting, “you’re faster than she is! Use it!”

In the middle of the tarpaper rooftop, A crowd of women, most of them in their twenties and thirties, stand ringed around Mary and a slightly younger woman in canvas work pants. The younger woman –named Camila, apparently– manages to scamper out of the way just before Mary sends a punch that would have likely left evidence if it had landed.

Camila is smaller of build than Mary, and has a baby face, but she’s quick and ferocious, and Mary has to work hard to get anything to land. Lilith watches in fascination as they circle each other, go at each other, get a flurry of punches in, and then disengage.

Eventually, Camila takes one in the stomach, and calls time. The other girls on the roof help her away and sit her down, get her some water. A few come over and congratulate Mary.

The older woman notices Lilith’s presence at this point. “There are no spectators here,” she says sternly enough to fill Lilith with trepidation.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what was going on.”

“You don’t stay if you aren’t fighting.”

“I was just looking for Mary…”

The older woman’s eyes twinkle a bit. “Mary! Are you ready for another?”

“What?” Lilith exclaims. “No no! I’m not here to fight, I just wanted to–”

Mary wheels around and sees Lilith in her little day dress and grins. “Well look who stalked me all the way up here.” She puts her up dukes and grins at Lilith over them.

“I didn’t stalk you! I just followed you!”

“I don’t really see the difference,” one of the girls comments. It’s the lighter-haired one who was smoking when Lilith came in.

Mary takes a towel and wipes the sweat from her face. “It’s alright. You jealous, Lily? You want a piece of me?”

Lilith is annoyed by this. Of course she was jealous when Mary was outproducing her, but she’s not anymore. “No, I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m just swell, baby,” Mary says. Lilith notices now that Mary is wearing actual boxing gloves. “Now come on. I’ve got some extra frustrations to work out tonight. You gonna help me or not?”

The two girls Lilith had encountered on her way in are pulling her over to one side and before she can effectively object, boxing gloves are on her hands and she’s being laced up. “I really don’t want to–”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” one of the girls says to her.

“It actually feels really good to get some shit out,” the other one says. “You’ll see.”

Lilith doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she’s shoved into the ring of people and stumbles forward into the lamplight. Mary is circling her slowly, her gloves at her side. “Come on, take a swing. First one’s free.”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Lilith says again.

Mary punches Lilith once in the stomach. It knocks the wind out of her. She stumbles back. “How about now?”

She’s not dressed for this. The heels of her shoes are sinking into the tar a little as she moves. But she took a punch, and she needs to give one back or else she won’t be able to look herself in the mirror tomorrow. She’s working at a handicap, but she still manages to get a punch or two in before Mary knocks her once in the mouth and then puts her on her ass on the rooftop.

Lilith sits looking up at her. She hurts in a few places. Strangely, she’s not that mad. The girls were right; it did feel good somehow to just throw some of weight into a punch. The older woman comes over and unlaces Mary’s glove and pulls it off. Mary leans down and takes Lilith by the forearm. “Come here.”

Lilith allows her to help her up.She’s got a bit of blood in her mouth. The other women are applauding, and yes, it’s mostly for Mary, who clearly won, but somehow it feels like it’s a little bit for her too.

Mary helps her out of her gloves, and then the two girls who laced her gloves up decide it’s their turn in the ring. Lilith wanders over to the edge of the roof and looks down onto the street. Mary turns up next to her after a moment.

“So what is this?” Lilith asks.

“It’s a place for us to let loose,” Mary says. “Some of us are factory girls, losing our jobs. Some of us, like the Colonel, are ex-WAC and can’t get a break, can’t find work. Some of us are just people out on the fringe way or another.”

Lilith looks at her. Mary takes a towel and dabs Lilith’s forehead and then gently presses it to the corner of Lilith’s mouth, where the blood had collected a little bit. Lilith mumbles a thank you.

“So the question is,” Mary goes on, “why do you belong here?”

Lilith wants to say she doesn’t but it isn’t true. She looks at Mary, all rough and sweaty and moonlit, and says, “I think we’re more alike than not.” Her blood is still surging with adrenaline.

“Is that right,” Mary says, and her gaze settles on Lilith’s split lip.She traces a finger over it boldly, and murmurs, “Sorry about that.”

Lilith’s pulse speeds up again, and she parts her lips. Mary’s eyes are so wise, she thinks; wise to everything, wise to Lilith and her secrets, wise to what she needs and wants. Wise to what she mostly ignores, until she can’t.

Mary takes her finger away, and leans down, kisses Lilith gently. Her tongue caresses the split lip. “Does that help?” she mumbles.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Lilith answers.

Mary is kissing her. _Mary_ is kissing her. Mary is kissing _her_. _My god,_ she thinks, _what is happening?_ Her whole body stirs in response to it.

“So that’s why you belong here,” Mary says.

They hover in the corner the rest of the night, watching the other girls go round after round. When they break, it’s nearly eleven.

The Colonel comes over and looks at both of them, and Lilith can just detect the amusement beneath her stern expression. “You,” she says, pointing at Lilith, “see you next week. Come dressed right next time.”

“You gonna come back?” Mary asks.

Lilith nods dumbly. “I want to see you again.”

Mary smirks. “Good.”

They descend the stairs, and say goodbye in the street without touching.


End file.
